


Things Too Wild For Their Words

by Jae



Category: Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 18:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jae/pseuds/Jae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max goes back to the wild things one more time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Too Wild For Their Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fated_addiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/gifts).



The house isn't any smaller.

That was the first thing Max said when they walked in. Katie had laughed and put her hand on his arm as he said indignantly, "They always say – people always say, when they come back to where they grew up, they say the house seems smaller, that's what I meant. Everyone says that but it's not, the house is the same."

"Of course it is, silly, it's only been a few months since the last time we visited."

"It seems longer," Max had said, "it seems like it should have changed. Everything else has changed," and Katie had taken her hand away.

The house isn't any smaller, but his mother seems smaller, older than the last time they were here. It was summer then, the first time he'd brought Katie home, the first time she'd met his mother for longer than a meal. His mother had been busy then, even on her vacation, working in the community garden, taking Katie down the long rows and pointing out corn and tomatoes while Max trailed behind. She had bent down over the herbs planted in the corner, pulling up a few leaves and holding them up for Katie to sniff. "Mint," Katie had said, and his mother had nodded and smiled, her big hat slipping down over her long braid.

"Mojitos," Max had said, and they'd all laughed. When they got home he made them while his mother cooked dinner, barely sitting down to eat without jumping up for something she'd forgotten, something she wanted to show them, just like always.

Now when Max walks in again to their house – her house – that isn't any smaller, his mother looks up and smiles but stays in her chair by the window. "Katie get off all right?" she says. "It's a shame she had to leave so suddenly, but when work calls … They must really rely on her."

Max says, "Yeah," and stands in the doorway.

"She's a nice girl," his mother says. "I wish –" she says, and stops the way she always has.

"What do you wish?" Max says. It's what he always says, what he's said since he was a little boy. They used to stand at the window and watch the stars and Max would wish for things, toys and trips and treats, greedy and impatient. His mother would listen and then say, "I wish," and stop, waiting for Max to ask. He always did.

"Oh, so many things," his mother says in a light voice, the way she always has, but this time there's no laughter in it, the way there always has been. There's something else, but Max doesn't think about it. He doesn't want to know what his mother's thinking about. He doesn't want to know what she's wishing for.

He sits down on the couch next to her and they watch TV for a while. His mother was never a big TV watcher, but now she knows all the characters and tells Max what's happened in previous episodes during commercials. Max knows already, but he lets her tell him. After a while, when she starts to yawn, Max stands up. "You can have your room back," he says. "I'll take the couch – we shouldn't have let you sleep down here, but now that it's just me, I really shouldn't let you sleep down here."

"No," his mother says, "no, it's fine, I like it."

"Seriously, go on up to bed. I'll stay down here, I don't mind the couch, and I might watch a little more TV."

"I sleep down here most nights," his mother says quietly. "I've been having some trouble with the stairs."

"Oh," Max says. He stays standing for a minute over the couch. Then he says, "Let me get your blankets," and goes to pull them out of the closet, ignoring his mother's protests. He gets her settled, fussing around her a little, tucking her in like she did with him once upon a time. As he bends over her she puts a hand to his cheek and tugs his head down, kissing his forehead.

She says, "Sweet dreams," and Max makes himself smile.

Upstairs he stands in the doorway to his mother's room, his duffel bag in the corner, the bed still made from the morning when Katie had done it while he showered. He stands there for a while, then turns around and closes the door.

His old room is a mess, but not the same kind of mess it was when he lived here. It's filled with boxes, pieces of fabric and piles of papers covering the bottom bunk, an old exercise bike shoved against the wall and sticking out so Max bangs his knee against it. He shoves everything off the mattress and sits down, taking off his shoes and curling up on his side. It's a little cold, even with his clothes on, but he doesn't feel like getting up to get a blanket. He pulls one of the longer pieces of fabric up over him, a thin silky material his mother must have meant to use for curtains or something. When he pulls it up over his eyes he can see through it, the boxes and furniture ghostly in the dim light. He closes his eyes.

When he goes downstairs in the morning his mother is awake and dressed, drinking a glass of water at the kitchen table. "Do you want breakfast, honey?" she says, but Max shakes his head.

"I'll get coffee later," he says. He looks at the clock. "It's almost ten – we should leave. You should have gotten me up earlier."

"Plenty of time," his mother says, and stands up slowly. Max keeps himself from helping her across the kitchen floor.

There's still snow mounded along the edges of the driveway, and the car slides a little as Max backs it out onto the road. Whoever his mother got to shovel for her did a crappy job, or maybe it's just hard to keep up with so much snow, because the streets are a mess all the way out to the highway. "It's been a bad winter," his mother says as they bump over a small hill of dirty gray snow.

The hospital parking lot has been plowed, the blacktop wet and gritty with salt. In the lobby Max signs them in and they wait for the elevator. When it comes there are two people in it already, a heavily pregnant woman in scrubs laughing with an orderly. "What floor?" the orderly asks, and when his mother says "three" he and the other woman stop laughing. They all stand silently and watch the numbers light up, one and two and three.

At the nurses' station everyone knows his mother, calling out to her, and she knows everyone, asks after children and grandchildren. She's always been like that, always asks after Max's friends, even long after he's stopped mentioning them, long after he's lost touch. One of the nurses comes around the counter and takes his mother's arm and smiles at Max. "This must be the famous Max," she says. "What a handsome boy, what did you do to get such a handsome boy?" she says.

"Oh, I just wished for him one night," his mother says, and the nurse laughs.

"Come on, honey, we're all ready for you," she says. She turns to Max. "She'll be a few hours, why don't you go and get yourself a cup of coffee somewhere or go ahead home? No point hanging around here, I can tell you for a fact the coffee's terrible."

"No," Max says. Part of him wants to leave, to get away from the antiseptic smell and the artificial hush into the crisp wintry air, but Claire would kill him. She can't get back here until after she's done teaching her last class but she emailed him his marching orders, questions for the doctors and things to watch out for. "No, I thought I'd keep you company, it's why I came –"

"I'm all right," his mother says. "Go ahead home, have some lunch, I'll be done by two. It's all right, Max," she says when he hesitates. "They won't let you back with me anyway."

"You go on and listen to your mother," the nurse says. "We know the drill. She's in good hands here."

"All right," Max says, "but you have my cell number, call me if anything – if you need me."

Max doesn't go out for a cup of coffee. He goes back to his mother's house and shovels the driveway so it's clear of snow, and then takes off his shoes and goes into the kitchen. He reaches into the trash can, down under some newspapers he'd stuffed in there, and takes out the jagged yellow pieces of a serving platter he'd shoved there the night before. After dinner his mother had listened when he said to let the dishes go, which if nothing else was a sign of how much had changed, and took a nap on the couch. He and Katie had done the dishes together. As he was finishing the plates and moving on to the pots, Katie said, "I know this isn't a great time, but I think –"

"If you know it's not a great time, why are you bringing it up?" Max had said, turning the water hotter.

"Because it's never a great time with you, Max, you never –" Katie glanced at the doorway to the living room and lowered her voice. "It's never a good time for you, you never want to talk, but we have to now, we don't have the luxury of time now –"

"That's really fair, like I'm making it up that it's not a great time, when we're here because my mom is – " He looked over at the door too and then lowered his own voice. "You're right, it's really not a good time, and it's kind of shitty for you to bring it up now, when I'm not, when I can't –"

"When you can't leave?" Katie had said, and Max's hands were slippery with the hot water and the soap and the platter slid through his hands and hit the floor with a crash. Katie flinched at the sound, and for a quick moment Max felt the same heavy giddy thrill he'd felt as a child when he knocked over a tower of Legos. Then he said, "fuck," because it was his mother's platter she brought back from Tuscany, broken in four golden pieces on the tile floor. He bent down to pick the pieces up and Kate bent down too.

"Look," she said, her voice softer, "I know, I know that things are changing right now, I know that it's hard for you but it's time for you to – you're a grown man, Max, you can't just – you're not a child anymore."

He looked at her across the broken pieces. "Are you so sure that's the reason?" he said, his voice soft and even. When she looked at him he said, "Are you sure it's because I'm not an adult, or I don't want change or whatever, and not just because I don't want you?"

Katie flinched again, and the same thrill flooded Max's veins as he closed his hands around the broken pieces of pottery, clutching them until his fingers bled.

She left after that, Max hadn't been able to talk her out of it although she agreed to tell his mother work had called, and Max had wrapped the pieces of the broken platter in newspaper and hidden them at the bottom of the trash. His mother hadn't known.

Now he takes the pieces out of the trashcan and spreads them out on the kitchen counter. There's glue in the cabinet, and Max takes his time, lining the pieces up carefully, patching them together and then wiping the glue away where it oozes over the cracks. It doesn't look perfect. It doesn't even look very good. It's easy to see that it's been broken, and Max isn't sure that the glue isn't poisonous. They probably shouldn't eat off it. He wraps it back up in the newspaper and puts it back in the trash. Maybe his mother won't notice. She's got a lot on her mind.

He stops at Starbucks before he picks his mother up, picking up a coffee for himself and a gingerbread latte for his mother, her seasonal indulgence. She's waiting downstairs in the lobby so he doesn't have to park, just pulls the car up to the front and opens the door for her, letting her make her way slowly across the sidewalk. When they're on the road he starts to say, "How was it?" but stops himself. "I got you a coffee," he says, "if you can call it that. I got you a cup full of sugary goop." His mother laughs but doesn't drink it. "Don't you like it anymore?" he says after a minute. "I thought gingerbread was your favorite."

"It is," she says with a smile. She lifts the cup to her mouth but doesn't drink. "It's just – my stomach, it doesn't agree with me these days."

"Oh," Max says.

At home his mother admires the job he did on the driveway and lets him bring her a glass of water. That night he offers to take her out for dinner but she begs off. "You go ahead," she says, "maybe you could call one of your old friends, I'm sure they'd be glad to see you," but Max stays home. He makes pasta and eats it at the kitchen table while his mother sits across from him, drinking another glass of water. When he clears the dishes and turns on the water to wash them, she follows him to the sink. "You're a good boy," she says. "I wish …"

Before he thinks about it Max says, "What do you wish?"

"Oh, so many things," she says, and Max can hear in her voice the way she doesn't want to be asked. He doesn't care.

"Why don't you just say it?" he says. "For once, why don't you just say what you want, why do you have to – " She doesn't flinch from his voice, just looks at him steadily. "I just wish you'd tell me, for once," he finishes sulkily, and his mother looks at him for a moment.

"Do you know what I wish?" she says. "Do you remember, oh, years ago now, I remember it was just after your – after your father left, we were looking at the stars and I asked you and you said you were wishing for a happy family. Do you remember that?"

Max does. He hadn't really been wishing for that, he knew by then he wouldn't get it, he'd been wishing for a videogame but he'd known it would hurt her so he said what he said. His dad had only been gone a couple of months by then and it was her fault, he'd known it, he remembered them fighting and his mother saying, "If you want to go so badly, just go, I can't stop you." He remembers saying the words, he remembers the way she winced, and the way he felt when he saw it, the same way he felt when he knocked over a stack of blocks or aimed his magnifying glass at an anthill, the thrill of power and then the sting of fear, that he could have that kind of power, that she'd let him. He remembers saying it but now he shakes his head.

"It was a long time ago," his mother says. "But I remember – I remember wishing for that too. And we didn't do too badly, did we? Maybe not the way I thought it would look, once upon a time, but we didn't do too badly. And now – your sister's happy, up there at school, and you – you're happy, aren't you, Max?"

"Sure," he says, and his mother looks at him, smiling, until he turns away. "Are you tired?" he says. "I'm a little tired, I thought we'd have an early night."

After his mother is settled on the couch Max goes up to his old bedroom. He brings sheets and a pillow with him this time, making up the bed and then changing into his sweatpants. When he lies down he turns on his side so he can see out the window. Snow is starting to fall again.

"I wish," he says out loud, and then turns on his other side and closes his eyes before he can finish wishing.

**

He doesn't get there by sea.

Of course not, he thinks as he blinks and then sits up on a familiar shore, the boat would be too small. He doesn't know how he got here, but he's here. He's back. He laughs and then howls, the sound curling through the darkness, running ahead of him as he chases it into the woods.

The woods are familiar, too, and the scent of the air, the crisp fresh scent of pine and then the heavier smell of smoke. He runs faster, laughing and howling again. He thought he would never come back, he'd tried and tried but he'd never been able to get here but now he's back, he's back and it's the same.

He stops short when he sees the fire.

It's bigger than it should be, that's the first thing he thinks, but then everything is bigger than it should be here, and wilder. It licks at the sides of the large round structures scattered across the clearing, licks at them like it's tasting them and then swallows them up, raging higher like it's still hungry. He falls back a step and behind him someone says,

"Who are you?"

He turns.

He turns, but he doesn't have to. He remembers the voice. It's still the same.

"It's me," he says.

Carol says, "Who are you?"

"It's me," he says. "Max. Don't you remember me? I was a king here."

"All the kings are gone," Carol says.

"I know," Max says. "I remember. I was – I was a boy here. Don't you remember?"

Carol peers at him. "You're not a boy now," he says.

"No," Max says. "I grew."

"You changed," Carol says, and if Max had doubted for a moment he would have known it was Carol by the accusation in his voice. "You came back, but you changed."

"No," Max says. "I grew, but I didn't – it's me. It's Max."

"Huh," Carol says. He comes closer and sniffs at Max. Max holds still for him. "You're not a boy. What are you?"

"I'm an engineer," Max says automatically, and laughs at himself, and at the look on Carol's face. "I build things, I went to school to learn how to build things."

"Huh," Carol says, but he sits down and lets Max sit down next to him. Max leans as close as he dares. Carol smells the same, woods and wet dog and smoke. "I can build things too. You're not the only one."

"I remember," Max says. They sit there watching the fire burn for a few minutes. Then Max says, "Where is everyone, anyway?"

Carol stands up. "They're gone," he says. "They're all gone, they all changed. You came back but you changed too. Not me, I didn't change. I'm the only one."

"They're all gone?" Max says, following him. "Where did they go?"

"Don't know," Carol says, running toward the center of the clearing. He kicks at one of the gray wooden structures and it comes off its base and spins down into the fire. "Don't know, don't care. You should go too. I'm busy."

"But I came all this way," Max says. "Don't you – didn't you miss me?"

Carol turns and looks at him. "You left," he says. "You changed, they all changed. They left," he says, and runs toward the fire.

Max watches him tear across the clearing, ripping apart the structures that are left, throwing the pieces into the fire. He gets too close to the flames and burns his hands and then runs, howling, into the dark woods. Max sits down on the ground and watches the fire burn until it finally burns itself out into embers. He puts his head in his hands. He thought, he thought things would be different if he came back, he thinks, and then shakes his head. He had thought things would be the same.

Something pokes his shoulder. "Hi," it says. "You probably don't remember me, that's okay, nobody does, it's all right."

"Alexander," Max says, and hugs him so hard they both roll over and over in the dirt.

"Ow," Alexander says, "you rolled on my arm," but he sits up next to Max and pats his back shyly. "You came back," he says.

"Where is everybody?" Max says. "How come you're here? Carol said everybody left."

"We moved," Alexander says. "We found these caves, they're really cool, Ira and Judith wanted to move there and everybody else did too, but Carol got mad, he didn't want to go, so Douglas and me said we'd stay, but Carol got madder and he tore everything up and yelled at us so we went away, but we come back to try and make him come with us but he never wants to. He's pretty mad."

"Where's KW?" Max asks. "She could talk him into things, I bet if she asked him to come he would."

"I don't know where she went," Alexander says. "She stayed here with Carol, she said she'd stay till he felt okay moving, but then one day I came over and she wasn't here anymore and when I asked Carol he pushed me down really hard and I hurt my leg and then he ran away. I don't ask him anymore. I don't know where she went."

"Oh," Max says. "Things have really changed here."

"You've been gone a while, King," Alexander says. "I mean Max. You've been gone a while, Max."

"I know," Max says. They sit watching the glow of the embers till it fades completely and there's nothing but the darkness. Then Alexander says,

"Do you want to sleep in a pile? I mean, it's only me, that's not much of one but if you wanted I wouldn't mind, but you probably don't want to –"

"I want to," Max says, and curls up with his head on Alexander's stomach.

In the morning when he wakes up there's a bright sun overhead and a huge shadow hanging over him. "Hi, Carol," he says.

"I thought I told you to go away," Carol says, but he doesn't sound as mad as before.

"I know. But I came all this way, and then I ran into Alexander –"

"Hi, Carol," Alexander says.

"And I wanted to see you and talk to you and I thought maybe if I waited, maybe this morning you wouldn't be so mad and we could talk."

"Huh," Carol says. Then he says, "Go away, Alexander, we have some stuff to do."

"I don't have to go away, I can stay here like anyone, Max said –"

"Would you mind, just for a little while, Alexander?" Max says. "Sorry, just, Carol and I have some stuff we want to do, maybe we can come see you later."

"Fine," Alexander says as he gets to his feet. "I'll just go back to the caves, it's better there anyway, I like it there, I didn't want to stay here anyway."

"Let's go down to the beach," Carol says. "I want to show you something." Carol starts to run and Max chases after him, but he can't keep up. When he stops, panting for breath, Carol comes back for him.

"Here," he says, "I'll carry you," but Max is bigger than he was. When Carol looks like he's getting mad Max says,

"I'll race you," and takes off toward the beach as fast as he can. He howls and Carol howls behind him.

At the beach Max falls onto the sand and Carol thunders down next to him. They lie in the sun until Max feels like his skin might melt right into the sand, and then Carol gets up and walks over toward the side of the cliff, rooting around at the base. "Come here," he says. "You should see this."

Max gets up and goes over, kneeling next to Carol in the warm sand. Carol says, "Hold out your hands," and Max does. Carol gives him a small box. It's a little bigger than one of Max's hands, made out of thin twigs, with bright feathers sticking out of it and some small shiny rocks, smooth and rounded, sitting on the bottom.

"What is it?" Max says.

"It's KW's," Carol says. "She always kept it and would never let me see it, but after she left I found it. I'm keeping it for her. I bet she thinks it's gone but it's not, I have it for her – here, give it back." Max does and Carol puts it back carefully into the hole he's dug for it, and covers it gently with sand and marks it with a small stick.

"Carol," Max says, "why did she leave?"

Carol looks at him and Max is sorry he asked.

"Because that's what she does," he says. "Come on, race," and he takes off again into the woods.

Back at the clearing Carol kicks through the ashes from the fire the night before and pulls out a big stick, burnt black along the edges. He swings it so that Max stumbles back. "You get one too," he yells, and Max looks around until he finds one. "Fight," Carol says, and Max swings his club through the air until it bangs against Carol's and he laughs. When Carol hits back Max stumbles over his feet and almost falls. They fight all around the edge of the clearing, until finally Carol takes one enormous swing and Max drops his stick and falls onto his back, laughing. Carol howls and howls, then falls down next to him.

When they're done laughing Max says, "Carol," and Carol says, quickly, "I want you to do something."

"What is it?" Max asks.

"You said – you said you could build," Carol says. "I mean, I can too, but I thought, if we both could, we could make something really big and great. I know last time – but I'm better at it than before, and you – you said you learned how to do it, so."

"What do you want to build?"

"I want to build a house," Carol says.

Max says, "Okay."

They spend the rest of the day drawing a big plan in the ground with a stick. It's ambitious, Max knows, but he is better at building than before, and he thinks they can do it. They sleep in the clearing that night and the next day they start. Carol has collected wood and long thin green leaves for a roof and big dusty rocks. Carol moves the big rocks into place and Max builds the walls on top of them, hammering with a big hammer Carol gave him. They don't talk much, they just work. By the end of the day they've done almost three rooms and Max is so tired that he can barely eat when Carol pushes some fruit at him. He curls up against Carol's back and falls asleep while Carol grunts and snorts next to him.

They do two more rooms the next day and then they start to work on the roof. Carol drew an elaborate pattern of leaves but his hands are too big to do the braiding so Max has to do it. The leaves tear easily and their edges are sharp and cut his hands. He goes slowly, and when he's partway done Carol comes over and looks down at him and says, "That's no good, you did it wrong."

"No, I'm just not done yet, when I finish putting this here –"

"No!" Carol says. He rips the leaves out of Max's hands and tears them into pieces, throwing them into the air. "You did it wrong, you ruined it. It's all wrong now, it's no good."

He storms off into the woods and Max storms off to the beach. He stands at the edge of the water and kicks at it so a spray lifts up and soaks him. He kicks again and again, harder and harder, and he howls and then he loses his balance and falls backwards into the wet sand.

"Wow," someone says behind him. Max gets up on one elbow and looks back.

"KW," he says, and scrambles to his feet.

"You're all muddy," KW says, but she lets him hug her. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Max says, flushing a little. "Just – I was just kind of mad, I don't know. Carol – well, me and Carol were building something, and –"

"And he got mad and wrecked it. You don't need to tell me," KW says.

"Well, I was doing it wrong," Max says, though he doesn't think he really was. "What are you doing here? I thought you were over at the caves with the others."

"No," KW says. "I didn't go there, I promised Carol I wouldn't go till he wanted to, so I don't."

"But you didn't stay with him. Where are you staying – are you with Bob and Terry?"

"Nah, those guys took off a while back, they've got a lot of stuff going on. I see them every once in a while. No, I'm staying out in the woods on my own. It's kind of sweet, I've got a little, like, nest. It's not bad."

"Come back with me," Max says. "Carol would want to see you."

"No, he's mad," KW says. "He's always mad."

"Well, cause you guys just left."

"Nobody just left, we told him – the caves are nicer, they're dry and warm when it gets cold, you weren't here in the cold, you don't know. And everybody wanted to, and even Carol liked them when he first saw them, he just got mad when we talked about moving there. I told him I wouldn't go without him, I'd wait for him, but he just got mad and wouldn't talk to me. He just kept building all these things and then he'd wreck them and I got tired of it."

"Just for tonight," Max says. "Come back. He won't be mad, I promise." He winces a little when he says it, because he knows he can't promise it, but Carol wants to see her, he knows it.

"All right," KW says. "Only for a while."

They see the fire before they reach the clearing. "Oh no," Max says, and starts to run. At the clearing Carol is standing over the remains of the house, looking at the fire like he's daring it to come after him. "Why did you burn it? It was good, we could have fixed the roof."

"It was ruined," Carol says, then he points at KW. "Why is she here, why did you bring her here when you knew it was ruined? Go away, it's ruined, don't look!"

"She doesn't care," Max says. "And it wasn't ruined, it was good. Why did you burn it? Why didn't you wait, we could have fixed it."

"He always does," KW says. "He ruins everything, he wrecks everything. He burnt all my stuff, he got mad and he burnt it all, that's all he knows how to do."

"You go away!" Carol says. "That's what you know how to do, you go away! Why do you think I wreck things, it's because you hate them, anything I build isn't good enough, you hate it so I wreck it."

"I don't hate it," KW says. "Whatever, never mind. It doesn't matter." She turns and starts walking into the woods, the same direction Alexander went. "I'm going to the caves."

"Wait!" Max says. He goes over to Carol and pulls at his arm until Carol bends down so Max can whisper in his ear. "Go get it, Carol, go show her."

"No," Carol says. "No, I won't, she's leaving. I don't care."

"Go," Max says, but Carol lumbers over to the fire and throws more sticks on it. "Fine," Max says. He grabs KW's arm. "Come here," he says, "I want to show you something," and takes off running toward the beach.

"No!" Carol howls. "No, don't, it's not yours –"

At the beach Max throws himself onto the sand and starts digging. "Hey," KW says when the flying sand hits her, but Max doesn't stop. Carol stops at the edge of the beach and watches. Max lifts the little box out of its hole carefully and stands up. He beckons KW closer.

"Hey," KW says again. "That's mine, I thought it was lost." She takes it from Max and cradles it against her chest. "Thank you," she says.

Carol runs over and pushes Max out of the way. "I saved it, I put it there," he says. "He didn't, it was me, I just showed him."

"I thought you wrecked it," KW says. "When you burnt everything that time, I thought you burnt it too."

"I found it after," Carol says. "I went through all the ashes, it took me all day but I found it. I saved it for you, in case you – if you came back, I saved it."

KW looks down at the box against her chest. Without looking up she says, "Why won't you come to the caves? You'll like it, it's fun there. Everyone's there."

Carol swings his arms a little but doesn't go anywhere. "Because – because I live here. That's not my place, I don't want to go there. I don't want everything to change, I want to stay, I want everybody to stay."

KW looks up at him. "What if – what if we lived here sometimes, and then there sometimes too? We could do both."

"But everybody wouldn't –"

"You and me, we could go back and forth, we could do both."

Carol's arms swing again, then fall still. "But we don't have anyplace to live," he says. "We built something but I pulled it down."

"We could build something else," KW says. "But you have to promise not to wreck it."

"Okay," Carol says. When his arms swing this time, KW takes his hand. Max takes a silent step back, but neither of them notice. "But I might wreck it," Carol says in a small voice.

"You have to try," KW says, and after a minute Carol nods. With her free hand she lifts up the little wooden box she cradled to her chest and shows it to him. Carol reaches in with a gentle finger and touches one of the rocks.

Max watches them and takes another step back, then another. When he steps into the water he doesn't turn around. He just steps back and back until the water covers him, until he can't see anything at all.

**

When he wakes the hall light is on and someone's standing in the doorway. "You should be asleep," Max says.

"It's me," Katie says, and Max says,

"I know."

Katie comes into the room and closes the door behind her so there's no light in the room but the moon. In the pale light she looks like an old statue from somewhere far away. She sits on the bed and Max sits up next to her. "I didn't come back to fight with you," she says. "I just – I thought it was kind of crappy of me to leave you alone here, with everything with your mom – with everything." Max shifts next to her and she says, "So I won't – we don't have to work anything out now, we'll just stay here while things get sorted out with your mom and then after, when we go home, we can – we can make a decision."

Max moves closer to her and puts his hand on her leg. She doesn't move away. "Do we have to?" he says. She flinches.

"No, you don't have to," she says. "You don't ever have to make a decision, that's fine, I can't make you, I can't make you change. But I know what I want, I know what I'm going to do, and I hoped – well. I just wished that things could be different, that's all."

"No," Max says. When Katie tries to get up he takes her hand. "I meant – do I have to wait until we go home? Can't I make a decision now?"

"You said – you said the timing was bad, it wasn't a great time –"

"I know," Max says.

"And you were right," Katie says. "With everything you've got going on, with your mom and all, I know it's hard for you. I know you don't want everything to change."

"Don't say that," Max says.

Katie looks at him. "Isn't it true?"

"No," Max says. "Some things, I think – it's good, I know, some changes. Some changes you – some changes I want."

Katie looks at him steadily and Max doesn't look away. He lifts his hand without letting go of her own and touches her stomach gently. "Are you sure?" Katie says, but she's smiling.

"Can we tell my mother in the morning?" Max says. When Katie kisses him he closes his eyes. He puts his mouth against her hair and says, softly, "I wish, I wish."

"What do you wish?" Katie says.

There is no way to tell her, Max thinks. There are some things there are no words for, or too many, some things too big and wild for the words they have.

"Oh, so many things," Max says, and kisses her again.

**

Max is already sweating from the day's heat as he races back to the hospital, coffee in hand. The lobby is crowded, but when he gets into the elevator people shrink back from him a little. "Someone's in a hurry," the woman next to him says, and then asks him what floor. "Five," he says, and she smiles at him. As he gets off the elevator she calls, "Congratulations.

In her room Katie is asleep, and Max can't blame her. Neither of them slept at all the night before, and she was certainly working a lot harder than he was. He puts the coffee down on the table next to the bed and bends to kiss her, her dark hair pulled back from her face, her mouth relaxed and open in sleep. He doesn't wake her.

He walks over to the window with one of the coffee cups. From the chair next to it his mother looks up at him, thinner than he's ever seen her, dark shadows under her eyes and a bright scarf wrapped around her head. She looks up from the child in her arms as Max bends to press his lips against the baby's forehead. She looks happier than Max has ever seen her.

"Where on earth," she asks, "did you ever get such a beautiful baby?"

"Oh, I just wished for her one night," Max says, and lets his mother put his daughter in his arms.


End file.
